My food-related gifts were: two new French silpats (my old ones had got a bit sliced up--I'd have never replaced them but hey, now I have perfect ones), Global fish bone tweezers (I just wish I had more fish to pick), a Global knife sharpener (hand-held, AND it's a water system, very cool), and a book about African culinaria that hasn't arrived yet.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

Anyway - we should get back to Christmas acquisitions relating to food. We can even extend that to Yuel Gruel - did anyone make anything interesting for the holidays? Any foie gras stuffed geese, or.......

We did a veggie dinner - an aubergine charlottes with cumin, served with split cherry tomatoes dressed with a coriander, evoo and crema di balsamico dressing, and then a mixed mushroom quiche. I'd certainly repeat the aubergine recipe!

Ah, that means Chick was over! Tell me more about the aubergine madeleine. I love using eggplant in molds, etc, and in fact plan to do an intriguing Boulud recipe here soon wherein a moussaka is reborn as a 'cake', to use his word, where the long eggplant slices line a bowl-like round mold and it's stuffed with the other usual ingredients. We need to do a winter terrine event.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

The aubergine dish was slices of eggplant oiled and roasted until soft, scraped into a bowl with fresh roasted cumin seeds ground up with some eggs (to set it) then assembled with a length of thin sliced roast eggplant laid in a mold (I used our small Staub cocottes instead of ramekins), and filled half with the cumin egg eggplant mix, then a layer of chevre cheese, then top up with the mix and fold the ends of the long strip of eggplant over on top (those slices retained the skin, but it is tender enough for eating).

Bake em, cool em, eat em. They were excellent. And would work well with anything from an austere Sancerre to a richer chard.